Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t only about content with relevant keywords. Although this aspect of SEO carries a lot of weight, more goes into a strong SEO strategy for real estate websites. When you want results, you must look deeper into the website at components like the URL, social media utilization, organic backlinks, and the overall structure of the website. It doesn’t even stop there, which is why it’s important to know the following list of important ranking factors for real estate websites.

On-Page SEO for Real Estate

On-page SEO is where you will utilize your keywords. You need to have keywords in the content but also in the title tag and meta description. You can also use keywords in the alt tags of images. This is called “image optimization,” and it’s important because search engines can’t see images. Search engines rely on alt tags to properly index an image.

Search engine algorithms also prefer fresh
content. This can be achieved by updating content as needed and posting regular
blog posts to the website. As you refresh content and post new content, it is
good to make sure you link internally to other pages on the website. This
creates a hierarchy that visitors and search engines can follow.

The Website’s URL

It is good to have a keyword in the URL.
This is an on-page SEO strategy that’s important. To do that, make sure the
“slug” after the .com in the URL is the page title. If the page title contains
the keyword, you’re in business. This sends a positive signal to Google.

Outbound Links

Another important element of on-page SEO
is the outbound links. Find an authoritative source and link to it. It’s a way
to send a user to another site to learn more about a subject. Why do you want to do this? It’s because it’s a Google
trust factor. Make sure these links are used in moderation because too many can
hurt your own PageRank. Diminished PageRank hurts your real estate website’s
search visibility.

Off-Page SEO for Real Estate

Off-page SEO involves tactics that are carried
out outside of the website. Obtaining inbound links is a good strategy because
they show that other websites have trust in your website. However, you want to
make sure that these links are acquired organically. Registering with business
directories can hurt you more than help you. This has made the directory an
obsolete link-building tactic. Think about quality over quantity when it comes
to links. As a real estate website, many of your links will happen naturally
because people will share property listings from your website. Most of these
shares occur over social media.

Social Media

When using social media to give your real estate business an online boost, don’t rely on just Facebook. Make sure you have a Google My Business page, engage on Twitter, use Instagram, and make an impact in the world of social media so people will share your content. Shared content means more traffic. More traffic translates into a better ranking.

Real Estate Website Structure

Of course, the website coding needs to be
clean. A good web designer will ensure there isn’t a lot of “junk” in the code
that can bog down the website. A good web designer will also make sure you have
a sitemap that helps search engines index all website pages. There are also
some trust factors that must be included. Some of those factors include:

Check incoming links
occasionally to make sure they are trustworthy so you can eliminate those that
aren’t

Not too many outbound
links throughout the site

A mobile-optimized
website so it can be viewed on any device

A domestic server

Google Search Console
integration (verification counts)

These aren’t all the trust factors, but they
are very relevant to real estate websites and should be taken into
consideration.

SEO Checklist

If you really want to dive deep into SEO for your real estate website, you can look at an SEO checklist. The list has approximately 200 items that include everything from domain length to duplicate content on the same website. If you can hit as many of those points as possible on your website, with those described in this article being those you want to target first, then you can greatly improve your website’s ranking.

Blogging is a key component of any digital marketing strategy. A blog can be an extremely powerful way to promote your business’s website, or it can be a business venture all on its own.

Blogging is a powerful way to deliver quality content and establish yourself, your company, or both as a thought leader in your field. Blogs have helped countless online personalities and businesses to garner much success and notoriety.

Here are just a few things you can focus on to give your blog an edge with SEO.

Get Your Own Quality Hosting

Step one in creating your massively popular blog is getting your very own domain name and hosting. If you do a quick search for blog hosting, you’ll come across countless links that promote free hosting. Ignore these.

Free hosting is great for someone looking for an outlet to write about a hobby or post pictures of family outings. However, if you’re serious about using your blog as a marketing tool or even as a business venture of its own, avoid these free hosts.

Imagine you’re reading a blog that is full of decent content but is covered in ads and logos from the free site it’s hosted on. It’s likely you won’t perceive this blog or its writer as an expert in the field it’s discussing.

You’re not alone. Most searchers view these blogs hosted on free domains as lower in quality and authority. Surely, someone that is an expert on a given topic would have his or her own domain. If searchers don’t take your blog on a free domain seriously, you can trust Google will avoid directing traffic your way.

Purchase a branded domain name and secure hosting. You’ll legitimize your blog as a trustworthy source on your topic.

Always Focus on Valuable Content

If you’ve done any amount of reading on SEO, you know that content plays a vital role in gaining site authority. Keep in mind that Google’s main mission on the web is to direct its millions of users toward the most valuable and relevant content.

Your blog’s content should aim to answer questions on your topic and deliver insight relevant to the problems of your target audience. Although blog content is typically a written post, you can also leverage various content types, like:

Original Videos or Vlogs

Audio Recordings and Podcasts

Pictures

As always, original content is key here. Get into the mind of your ideal reader. What questions does he or she have? Use this thought process to develop valuable, original content that the search engines can point users toward.

Produce Regularly

One of the best ways to build a solid blog following is producing quality content consistently and regularly. Posting regularly lets your readers know when they can expect additional content and tells Google that your site is active. Google crawls a site with much less frequency when it believes it to be inactive.

In addition to conditioning your readers to look for your content and letting Google know your site is active, producing regularly is also a fast way to build a library of valuable content. The more quality posts you produce on your blog, the higher your authority in your field will rise.

Use Internal Linking

As you begin to produce high-quality content more often and build up a solid collection of content, you can give context to new posts by linking to previous blog articles. Not only does this add content to your newer posts, it also directs readers to older posts they may have missed but would be interested in reading. These internal links also help build up your authority and boost the SEO of your previous articles.

Utilize SEO Plugins

There are multiple SEO plugins you can leverage to create more optimized blogs posts. These plugins perform an analysis and aid with selecting keywords that you can base your posts on. Most of these plugins will also help ensure that you put keywords in optimal places, write optimized meta descriptions, and proper keyword density and focus.

Optimize Your Headings

Including optimized headings on your blog posts help readers easily navigate your content and gives you an SEO boost. These headings make it easier for search engine bots to understand the major points and topics of your post. This is especially true for longer blog posts.

Blogs can be powerful tools for SEO and digital marketing. Whether you’re blogging to improve the authority of your business’s website or you hope to make the blog itself your new business venture, if you keep these above tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to a successful blog.

Need help with your blog? We have several blog posting packages available that include everything from writing to posting.

The demand for IT companies is growing, and industry growth is chasing after that demand. That means there are a lot of companies competing for the same pool of business. To be effective in securing that business, an IT company must stand out. This is best achieved by having a strong online presence, which means strong SEO tactics must be used so your website will rank well under relevant search terms on Google.

However, strong SEO starts with a good website. There are certain elements of a well-built website, such as:

A relevant domain that isn’t too long

Hosting that enables fast site speed

A content management system that allows for easy and fast editing (i.e., WordPress)

Testimonials and links to positive company reviews

Social media buttons that allow visitors to share content

A visually pleasing design that is easy to follow

An open path to being able to sign up for services or make contact

Fresh content that keeps visitors up-to-date on the business and industry

Evidence that there are actual people behind the website because IT websites can seem very “mechanical”

If you have these key components in place, you have laid a good foundation for a site that can be properly optimized for search engines.

Getting Your IT Company Website to Rank Well

To make sure your great IT company website ranks well, you want to start with placing internal links throughout your content that link to other pages on the site. Navigation doesn’t begin and end with the menus on the website. You can map out how you want the pages to link and then go to the site pages and create the hyperlinks.

Basically, you want to think of your website as a filing cabinet. When you are creating pages, make sure your keyword is in your URL. For example: example.com/mykeyword/. The content management system you are using may automatically do this for you when you create the page title. That’s why it’s important to make sure keywords are in the page title. If you are using subdomains, don’t split content into subdomains when it can be split into sub-folders.

Also, add keywords to your meta title and meta description. Keywords have a lot of SEO juice when they are used properly throughout the website. Just make sure you don’t use them too much. One relevant keyword per page with semantic keywords naturally placed in the text will make Google happy.

Avoid Common SEO Issues

There are some things that can happen that can confuse search engines. If a search engine becomes confused, it can work against you. For instance, you don’t want orphaned content on your site that the search engine can’t find. You could have a magnificent piece of text, but no internal link leading to it could leave it hanging high and dry. You also want to avoid content that can only be found through a site search. This is because Google isn’t going to use the search function to find pieces of content that may not have any other doorway leading to it.

You also want to avoid overly flashy effects. Videos can be great, but not in excess. You don’t exactly want a video to be a focal point since not everyone wants to wait for a video to find out what they need to know. Video should be an optional supplement. The same applies to audio files.

If you’re a fan of frames, you want to avoid those as well. Frames can be problematic when a search engine crawls your website. It can be confusing because the frame contains information from another website. This could easily be interpreted as duplicate content.

Another thing to note: although Google has gotten better at reading AJAX pages, you want to use it sparingly. Content can become obscured if AJAX is everywhere.

Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Mobile-friendliness is key since more people are using their mobile devices to conduct searches. We are no longer in the computer-first age. When a site is optimized for search engines, the mobile layout needs to be equally considered. Search engine results for mobile can be different than the results shown to someone on a computer. This is because the search landscape is somewhat different for mobile users than it is for computer users. You want to rank well for both. Responsive web design is no longer enough, so you should pay extra attention to mobile design.

Grab Your Audience

Overall, you will rank well when everything is done well. Both humans and search engines should have a good idea of what your IT company’s website is about. If they’re confused, they will leave as soon as they arrive at the site. That is why you must think of the website as the foundation and the SEO as the beautiful house that attracts your target audience.

When on the hunt for a place to sit down for dinner, the majority of restaurant goers will take their initial search online. If you’re a restaurant owner or manager, you’ll definitely want to be seen by these potential customers when they search on the web. To do so, you’ll need to optimize your restaurant’s website to get to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).

Social media is one of the most effective tools you have at your disposal for getting your restaurant found online. While there’s been some debate about how the search engines utilize social media metrics, their web crawlers treat social media sites just like any other. It’s no secret that Google and Bing definitely take notice of your social media presence.

Any solid digital strategy will incorporate social media to obtain its goals. You can leverage the engagement factor of social media to connect with current and potential customers all while boosting your web presence. You’ll notice more visitors coming through your door as you engage your customer base and your site moves up the SERP food chain.

Organically Grow Your Followers

You should focus on establishing a decent following on social media. The size of your follower base on various social media platforms can drastically affect your search rankings. Larger followings help boost your credibility and give you a leg up in search rankings.

Quality followers are important here. Google analyzes your follower list and determines the caliber of your base. This means that purchased followers won’t help you out in the overall rankings. Put your energy into building your followers organically. This means presenting your brand consistently in a way that connects with your desired audience. Post content that you think your ideal customers will want to read or tips that they would find helpful. Engage directly with the followers that you do have. Be responsive and start a conversation with your current followers. Engagement is a small seed that blossoms into a large interactive following quickly. Don’t neglect it.

Optimize Your Tweets

Take the time to optimize your posts on Twitter for SEO. Thanks to a partnership forged between the social platform and Google, your tweets could possibly show up in search results. Include keywords in your tweets that you think customers searching online for restaurants are likely to use. On Twitter, hashtags act as keywords. By including targeted hashtags/keywords in your posts, you’ll improve the searchability of your content. This means those potential customers searching for restaurant-specific keywords in your area are more likely to find your content. Shy away from packing in too many hashtags at the end of your posts, as this may drive down engagement by coming off as spam. Try to stick to no more than three targeted hashtags for each post.

You’ll want to periodically survey your hashtag use and determine which ones get the most engagement in the form of clicks, likes, retweets, and follows. Use this information to tailor your account and incorporate the most popular tags in future content.

All is not lost if your posts still don’t show up in Google search results. By focusing on creating optimized posts with targeted keywords relevant to your restaurant and the industry, you’ll begin to build a reputation as an authority in your field.

Utilize Your Social Profiles to Build Links

In the past, Google’s search results placed a high value on links regardless of the quality of the individual links that you built. As this became common knowledge, people began to manipulate the search rankings by building out low-quality backlinks to their site. In response, Google shifted the focus to reward high-quality links in search results.

By including backlinks throughout your social media accounts, you can leverage the high web authority of sites like Facebook and Twitter. Google will view these links as higher in quality. Be sure to include links back to your restaurant’s website on all of your social profiles, as well as in any content that you post.

Post specific content, like current menu specials or recipe blog posts, across all social platforms to promote sharing. Shares will continue to establish your restaurant’s reputation as an expert in your field as well as capitalize on the web authority of the social platforms that you use. This will increase traffic to your site and give you a bump in search rankings.

The way in which you use your restaurant’s social media can have a huge impact on how your site ranks in search engine results. You’ll definitely want to keep the above in mind as you consider your social media strategy. Focus on developing a solid social presence in conjunction with your other SEO efforts. When properly optimized, your restaurant’s social media will help put your site toward the top of search results and in front of countless customers.

SEO might not be the first thing that comes to mind for small business owners when they set their marketing strategies. Many local businesses think that SEO is strictly for companies that do a large amount of their business online.

This assumption is a huge mistake. A reported 88 percent of consumers look at reviews on the web prior to purchasing services from local businesses. Small businesses can use SEO as a massively effective tool. If you have a small business, like a moving company, that is specific to one geographic area, you can use local SEO tactics and target your ideal market right outside your door.

To target your local market online for your moving company, here are 10 local SEO strategies.

Start with the Basics

You’ll first need to establish your business page with the search engines’ local directories. The big players are:

It’s a pretty straightforward task; simply enter your moving company’s name, address, and phone number, also known as NAP data. Make sure your NAP data are formatted uniformly with the information on your site. You want this information to be consistent anytime a potential customer finds it online.

Format Your Business Info Correctly

While it’s important for your moving company’s NAP information to be consistent on the web, you’ll also want to format it correctly. On your site, ensure your NAP data are formatted in HTML that is search bot friendly.

You can also use schema markup in your HTML code to give the search bots even more detailed information about your company. You can include available services or products, customer reviews, and more.

Include High-Quality Pictures

When customers perform local searches, they often pay attention to pictures of the various businesses. Ensure you upload professional-looking photos into your local business accounts for Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Google will automatically place a picture on your account, so make sure to pick your own.

Don’t Neglect Business Directories

After you’ve claimed your business on all the major search engines, it’s time to look at the review sites. Some of the most popular sites to focus on include:

Ensure these business review platforms list your business. You can also claim your company, like you would through the search engines. Make sure your NAP data on these pages are consistent with your site and search engine business pages.

Watch Your Online Reputation

Although claiming your page and optimizing your NAP data are important for local SEO, you also want to pay close attention your online reputation and the feedback your company is getting on these review sites. Google has repeatedly mentioned that reviews factor into local results for businesses, so focus on garnering high-quality reviews, especially for Google My Business.

Leverage Social Reviews

Many consumers look to Facebook to find reviews of products and services from their friends list. Focus on garnering positive reviews on your social media platforms to leverage this word-of-mouth style local marketing.

Separate Social Between Branches

If you have multiple branches for your moving company, set up social media profiles for each individual location. Social platforms, like Facebook, have location functionality, which allows business owners to control the pages for all individual locations, as well as the main page for the entire company. This lets customers interact with each branch and the company as a whole.

Create Locally Targeted Content

Build your content strategy on locally focused keywords and topics. Blogs, articles, and other content should hone in on the local area. For your moving company, craft content that relates directly to your business and delivers value on a local scale.

This might look like a blog post about local on-street parking regulations for moving trucks or the best time of the day to move in your city to avoid traffic congestion.

Remember Mobile Optimization

A good deal of local searches take place when customers are on the go. This means they’ll likely be performing their search on a mobile device. Make sure your moving company’s website is optimized for mobile users.

Tweak Your Title Tags

Include geographic descriptors in your title tags to boost your pages for local search. Instead of using “highly rated moving company,” use a tag like “best moving company in New York City.”

Optimizing your title tags lets search engines know that your services are local to your area, which increases the chances they rank for local searches.

When used properly, local SEO can push your moving company’s website to the top of the search results pages. By focusing on these local strategies, you can hone in on your target audience online right in your own backyard.

The web is one of the first places many people go when they have legal issues. With a quick search on Google, they can find more information about their legal dilemma and a listing of local attorneys just waiting to handle their problem.

If you’re not one of the attorneys or law firms coming up in the search results, you’re missing out on thousands of potential clients. The web is a great resource for those seeking legal help, but it can also be a great tool for your firm to get in front of potential clients.

Here are a few potential reasons your firm’s name isn’t popping up at the top of the search engine results.

1) You’re Not Targeting the Correct Keywords

Keywords are the specific phrases people use to perform a search on Google. These are typically phrases like, “DUI attorney in New York City.” You may have some issues being found in the search results if you’re not doing your keyword research and using your findings to guide your content.

The key to targeting the right keywords is all in the research. You need to envision your ideal clients and then think of what types of problems or questions they may have. If your firm mostly handles DUI charges, you’ll want to start your research on words and phrases someone recently charged with a DUI might use in a Google search.

You can use the Google Keyword Planner Tool to view the analytics of certain keywords and phrases that you think of. The keyword tool will also suggest related keywords, which will help you build your keyword list.

These targeted keywords will be the basis of your content strategy. You’ll use them to write informative articles that help answer the questions that they’re related to.

2) You’re Not Posting Regularly

Getting your firm’s site in the top of the search engine results is a commitment. Part of this commitment includes posting on a consistent basis. Stagnant blogs with no posts in several months don’t display the level of authority and expertise you’re looking for.

A good target to aim for is one post per week. To gather a decent following and establish yourself as a leader in the legal field, you’ll need to post as often as possible without going overboard. As readers come to know you as a consistent source of legal information, your shares and readership will increase.

One great way to produce quality content is to create a schedule for posting and commit to it. You can create multiple articles at once and then schedule them to be posted later

3) You’re Not Using Social Media

You should use your social accounts to amplify content on your page. Post the links to your articles and other content across all social media channels. Not only will this make your content visible to followers on your social media that may not visit your page regularly, it will also increase the odds of your articles being shared.

4) You’re Posting Thin Content

Posting high-quality, relevant content is a surefire way to steadily push your site up the search results pages and establish your firm as a legal authority. Churning out the same old information spun in various boring ways will do just the opposite.

Thin content is the exact opposite of high-quality content. Whereas quality content is original and provides valuable information to users, thin content doesn’t offer any useful or actionable information for readers.

Users that take to a search engine to look for legal answers need very specific and often technical information. Thin content is not very good at delivering this type of information. Focus on thoroughly delivering quality information, and you’ll see a slow but steady rise in your site’s search positioning.

5) You’re Not Using Internal Links

When it comes to SEO, so many site owners and managers think about external links and their benefits. Although external links are great ways to boost SEO for your firm’s site, don’t neglect the power of internal links.

If you’re posting regularly, you should have a healthy amount of content on your site. Linking back to relevant posts from the past is a great way to give context to current posts, highlight old content readers may find valuable, and boost SEO.

With so many people searching for answers to legal issues online, your firm can’t afford to have its site sit at the bottom of the results pages. Focusing on these above problems and making a commitment to fixing them will help right the ship and improve your chances of moving up in the rankings.

The world of e-commerce is highly competitive. Thousands of niche product sites vie for the clicks of shoppers across the world. In a space where so many competitors jostle for elbowroom at the same table, every edge your site can garner will go a long way.

Most site managers do their fair share of due diligence when it comes to site SEO (search engine optimization). They ensure that a base level of SEO tactics is applied to their e-commerce page. Yet with so much at stake, there are simple things site owners and managers can do to give their site the extra boost it needs to land at the top of the SERPs.

Optimizing e-commerce sites for SEO is different from blogs or company websites. The hundreds or thousands of product pages can create mayhem for SEO game plans. For e-commerce sites, the base level of search optimization doesn’t guarantee traffic. Below are a few strategies many sites often overlook that can give your web store an extra edge.

Ensure Proper Keyword Placement

The placement of your keywords always trumps the frequency. If you stuff too many keywords into your page, you risk being penalized by search engine algorithms. Turn your focus toward ensuring your keywords are in the right location instead.

Google places priority on the beginning of title tags, so this is where you’ll want your targeted keywords. Be sure to include the keyword in the meta description, as well. This will ensure that Google doesn’t choose random content from your page and use it as your description. It’s true that the meta description itself doesn’t affect your ranking, but it’s insanely important when it comes to click-through rates, so don’t neglect it.

URLs, headers, and subheaders rank second behind your page’s metadata. Be sure to include your keywords in these locations as it makes sense to do so. Also, place your keywords throughout the body of the content in a way that reads naturally.

Give Images Context with Alt Text

Many e-commerce sites miss the chance to capitalize on solid image alternative text, or alt text. Alt text is simply descriptive text applied to the images on your site. This text lets the Google web crawlers read your image and give context in relation to the content surrounding it.

Properly written alt text can give your site a leg up on the competition by taking advantage of the popularity of Google’s image search.

This is especially important for e-commerce sites considering the large number of photos included in a typical web store. It’s important that you take the time to add quality alt text to each of your product images. While this is a large undertaking, you’ll definitely see the benefit when you edge out your competition in the SERPs.

Keep in mind, your efforts may be in vain if you don’t include quality alt text. Solid alt text gives a detailed description of the image. Avoid simply stating what the item is; instead, include brand names, item numbers, and other specific descriptions. Most web page crawlers only read about 125 characters of alt text, so keep it short. Take advantage of the alt text by including your keywords but avoid stuffing. You simply want to concentrate on providing context to the picture and incorporate your keyword if logical.

Avoid Duplicate Content

You may have heard that content is king when it comes to building out solid SEO. This is definitely true, but the saying only tackles part of the issue. Original content is truly king. You can have all the content in the world on your site, but if duplicates exist elsewhere on the web, your ranking will suffer drastically.

While you won’t be penalized directly for duplicate content on your page, you will create issues for the search engines when they attempt to index your URL. Duplicate content makes it difficult for the search engine crawlers to determine which URL is most relevant for given keywords.

This can be pretty common for e-commerce sites with vendor-provided product descriptions. Vendor-distributed product descriptions are often copied and pasted onto individual e-commerce stores, creating a vast amount of duplicate content across the web. You should aim to create as many unique product descriptions as possible. This is a big undertaking when you consider many e-commerce sites have hundreds, if not thousands, of products. You may have far too many products to write unique descriptions for each one, and that’s OK. The idea is to avoid page after page without any unique content. Aim to rewrite the majority of your descriptions, and you’ll be off to a good start.

It’s true that e-commerce SEO presents a different set of challenges compared with traditional sites or blogs. The massive amount of moving parts and content can make optimizing your web store extremely difficult. It may be tempting to lay out a basic SEO strategy and consider it good enough, but by taking a few extra steps, you can leverage tactics that many site managers often overlook. If you put in the effort, you’ll see your hard work result in increased traffic.

Search engine optimization is crucial to the success of your website and, therefore, your clinic. The way patients find a doctor today has completely changed from 15 years ago. The majority of patients start their search for a doctor online. In fact, a reported 86 percent of patients conduct an online search before booking an appointment.

The simple truth is this: Your clinic’s online presence matters. You’re missing out if you’re not taking the steps to ensure your site has the best chance of being seen. SEO will get eyes on your site and patients into your clinic. The following SEO hacks will help you do just that. Full disclosure, these “hacks” are simply efficient ways to implement SEO and are in no way gray- or black-hat techniques.

Harness the Power of Video

If you had to guess the second-largest search engine in the world, what would your answer be? Bing? Yahoo? You’d be close, but wrong. YouTube receives over 3 billion searches per month. You should definitely be leveraging the platform to drive traffic to your site.

A clinic YouTube channel is a great way to supplement your site’s original content while also adding value to the user experience. The useful information you can give to potential patients is nearly unlimited. Not only will you deliver great informative content, you’ll have the chance to have your videos indexed on YouTube and within Google search results, which will drive traffic from two huge sources.

Combine JavaScript Tags

Various sites, like Google Analytics, Google+, and Twitter, request to install JavaScript code onto your site to power certain processes. While some of these functions have their usefulness, each one that you install pulls down your site speed. Slower speeds are horrible for SEO and cause your site to take hits with the search engine algorithms.

You can prevent loading time issues by using the free Tag Manager tool from Google. Instead of having your site deploy each snippet of code by itself, enter the code snippets into the tag generator. The tool will give you a uniform, site-wide tag that will deploy the individual JavaScript snippets. Your load times will drastically decrease compared to when your site had to fire each snippet off individually.

Utilize Social Media to Stay Ahead of the Curve

Be sure to monitor social media platforms and forums specific to the medical field. If you see a topic of discussion that constantly seems to be trending, incorporate this conversation topic in your site’s content and blog. This is an excellent way to do keyword research.

Picking up on these conversational trends will boost your site in multiple ways. Being out front of a hot topic or question will help you rank for that particular phrase. By having answers to questions that everyone is asking, you’ll also take steps towards becoming an authority in your field. By keeping your ear out for trending conversations on social platforms, you’ll be well in front your competitors in ranking, in site traffic, and as a thought leader in your field.

Get Rid of the Huge Pictures

Your high-resolution images may be hindering your SEO efforts. Large pictures can drastically slow your page’s loading speed. This not only puts a big dent in your search rankings but also tanks the user experience. No one wants to sit and wait forever for your site to load.

You’ll want to be sure your images are solid in quality, have the correct aspect ratio, have decent resolution, and are the right size to be compatible with various devices. If you’re having trouble spotting large image files that are slowing your load time, use a tool like https://tools.pingdom.com. It will check the files sizes of all the elements on your site and identify any that are unnecessarily large.

Don’t Neglect Your Meta Description

Many digital marketers seem indifferent to their meta descriptions. Since they think the meta description isn’t factored into Google’s algorithm, they haphazardly throw in some characters and move on. Don’t make this mistake for your clinic’s website.

It’s true, Google does not take meta descriptions into account for ranking purposes, but they’re still extremely important. This is the space you get to include your call to action and entice clicks with powerful language, which does affect your rankings. Take the opportunity to write a persuasive, creative description and watch the clicks roll in.

If you thought SEO was just for e-commerce sites, you’ve been missing the mark. Your potential patients are out there, turning to the web in droves to decide which clinic to visit. Take full advantage of the opportunity to optimize your site so that you’ll be there at the top of the results page when they’re ready to click.

“Marketing is a contest for people’s attention,” says Seth Godin, best-selling author, marketing expert and entrepreneur. Currently there is an attention crisis with brands and companies struggling for attention. Why not when there are so many brands to choose from? Gone are the days when the only thing a company had to do to be successful is to create a useful product and make people know about it through advertising. If you want to be a success today, then you have to market accordingly.

One of the best ways of marketing a product or a service is through content marketing. Industry leader Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” Content marketing came to be as a result of consumers shunning away traditional marketing methods like television, print ads and even online ads. Content marketing has many platforms: social media, blogging, infographics, slideshows and videos, all geared toward customer engagement and eventually, profit for the company.

Content is King

Content can be anything from a very important piece of scientific writing to a video of three dogs chasing their own tails. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, in an article with the title Content is King, states that the Internet is a marketplace of content – ideas, experiences and products.

But this kind of marketing is not churning out articles or video clips just for the heck of it. Businesses need to do marketing with fresh and relevant content to stay on top. As Gates writes in his essay. “If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines.”

Content is written not only for search engine optimization, but more importantly for customer engagement. To produce great content and engage your audience, you must:

Have knowledge, insight and perspective that set your content apart.

Have someone in your business to produce compelling and valuable content.

Have the resources to regularly create content for existing and potential customers.

Unless you have these, content marketing will not work for you. Bad content is just a waste of time and energy.

Content Generation and Relationship Building

If you want a successful business, – then you have to build a relationship with your customers. You can do this by engaging your customers – both existing and potential – through generation of great content. Here are some tips in producing fresh and engaging content:

Create content centered on the customer. Know your audience and create stories that focus on them. More than writing about your product specifications or the advantages of hiring the services you offer, you should make your audience the star – so make something that appeals to the customer in an intellectual and emotional level.

Know which style works best. Will you build a relationship with your customers through articles or forum discussions? Are you going to make videos to reach out to them? Personalize your content delivery to draw customers in and make sure to continue the connection through constant engagement.

Be accessible. Make it easy for your customers and your target audience to be connected and to stay connected to your brand. You can do this by phone, by chat or by email. Make sure that your website is easy to navigate by positioning buttons and links accordingly.

Be personal. Nothing would encourage engagement better than personal stories. Be yourself and communicate this in your content. Most products and services offered nowadays are of the same high quality, so differentiate your brand and inspire customer connection, engagement and loyalty.

Put quality over quantity. Do not feel pressured to put out great amounts of content at a single time. Remember that quality is always better than quantity, especially if you are after building a relationship that lasts.

Be committed. Building a brand and engaging customers is a long and hard process, much like building a relationship with a real person. If you cannot commit to generating great content, then do not expect to build lasting relationships with your customer base.

Nurture connections. Your content should not just bridge the gap between you and your customers. It should also allow your audience to connect with other people. Therefore your content should evoke emotions that will spur your customers to share it and spread the word about your brand and what you offer.

Offer help. People turn to the Internet for almost every need. If they know that you can help them solve problems, then you will become a trusted and reliable go-to resource for help. People inherently like to be consistent and loyal to what they believe to be trustworthy and consistent, so make sure that your content is truthful and honest.

Share your expertise. The days when you have to withhold your secret formula for success is gone. Nowadays, information is a commodity that people can easily get with a single mouse click or finger tap. If you want to be successful in building a relationship with your customers, then you have to share what you know through free courses, webinars and e-books, among others.

Be compelling. Write detailed and informative articles with catchy titles. Create emotionally-charged videos that people like to share and discuss. Be consistent with your delivery and before you know it, you will have a strong following.

Encourage engagement and create meaningful conversations through content marketing. Through these meaningful conversations you will be able to build strong, solid and lasting relationship with your customers, which will, in turn, drive profit and success for your brand.

Technology continues to develop at a staggering rate. Almost everything – including marketing – has become digital now. You want your company and your brand to be at par with your competitors, so you build yourself a website too, in order to spread information about your product or service. But just having a website does not guarantee success. You have to consider many other things, one of which is your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking.

What is SERP?

What is SERP, exactly? When a user looks something up in Google, the first page he would see after typing his query and hitting enter is a list of relevant websites to his query, ranked in the order of importance, with the most relevant site on top. This is the search engine results page.

People are impatient. If they do not find what they want in the first few links they click, they would try another search query. This is a fact proven in a study made by Jupiter Research in April 2008. The results showed that the number of users clicking the first few websites on the first SERP increased by 68 percent from 2002 to 2008. Moreover, fewer users looked at the second or third page of the SERP. This is why being on the first page is important. Being on the second or third page of the SERP is equivalent to you losing 90 percent readership from your target market, potential customers and, eventually, profit. You need to ensure that your site ranks high by making it optimized for search as much as possible.

SERP ranking is Important

SERP ranking is important because Google wants to give its customers the most relevant results to their inquiry. The higher your ranking in the SERP listing, the higher the likelihood of people visiting your website. Since Google is a machine that does not have the human capabilities of understanding the context behind images or videos, it can only look at the text information in the site and monitor links to it. Therefore, you need to have content in your site that is optimized for search engines (more commonly known as search engine optimization or SEO).

Factors that Affect SERP Ranking

How do you get to the top of the listing? Here are some of the considerations:

Google wants to give its customers the best results, so it takes into consideration the location of the user according to their server. The closer you are to the customer’s server the more likely your site will rank high in the SERP. If the customer is not very specific with the search (for example restaurants in Dallas) then Google will make the assumption that the customer needs something near him and adjusts the SERP ranking of sites accordingly. In order to optimize your website for local search, local SEO will have to be done in order to ensure all elements are present on and off your website.

When people look things up, they type their query on the search bar. “Houses for sale” is an example. These are then called keywords. Google sends its spiders to crawl the web and send back to the SERP the websites that contain the keywords.

It is for this reason that website owners hire writers and SEO professionals to produce good content with keywords adequately distributed throughout the body of the content. When you plan your content, make sure to come up with good keywords – what your potential customers are most likely to use as keywords when searching a product or service that you offer.

In the past, keyword density was of huge importance. Websites were on a race to churn content teeming with keywords in order to top the SERP listing. However, putting too many keywords – also known as keyword stuffing – made for badly written content, which now leads to penalizing from Google. Therefore, your site must have meaningful content with the keywords and related words sitting prominently in the title and scattered well throughout the text.

Links act as recommendations and up votes. When you have other websites linking yours, then Google will think that your site is relevant. As a result, your website will get a higher SERP ranking. However, it is important to get links from trustworthy websites that also rank high on the SERP, not just link spamming from non-related websites.

This is the most important factor that will help see your site to the top of the SERP listing. Great content gives valuable information and is written for users, not for search engines.

The better your content is, the more visits you get – and this is something Google can determine. If your site is dynamic with people commenting and linking to it because of good content, then you are sure to get a higher ranking.

Social activities. These include shares, likes, and social following. If you need proof about how important this is, you just have to look at your Facebook newsfeed (supposing you have one) and see the content your friends are sharing – videos, articles and what-have-you. Google also takes into consideration the behavior of users. If you have very good content, then it would naturally get shared. Your website will have more traffic because people are talking about it. The more shares your site has, the more credible it becomes. When Google detects rising social activity in your site, it will place higher in the listing.

As with everything else, search engines will continue to change based on the behavior of their users. Naturally, search engines like Google want to provide the most relevant information their users need. By understanding the basics of SEO and SERPs, you can optimize your website to make it rank high on the SERP listing. As a result, your online presence will be strong. This strength will be communicated not only to your existing and potential customers but to search engines as well. Be clever with the use of links and keywords. Write fresh content that people find valuable to read and share. By following these tips, you will have a higher chance of ranking high in the SERP listing and a higher chance of success.